J. E. Oliver

“ Does the ego here act apart from motives, feeling no pressure from them, or as one among motives, and often against some of the others? i.e. if by "Volition" we understand, not the observable resultant of the ego's free and original act as combined with other causes, but only that act, pure and simple, then are all volitions alike as to strength, intensity, degree of effort, — or do they differ in this respect according to the strength of the opposing motives? ”

“ We cannot do or become at once just what we would: the ego can act effectively only through, or as part of, an intricate mechanism, and perhaps much that it seems to initiate is mere ideomotor reaction. Yet I think its directive agency does tell in making results to be somewhat other than they would have been, and thus gradually moulding character and environment, and the heredity of those who shall come after. ”

“ Again, must this quasi-perpendicularity be regarded as a mere convenient metaphor, or may it be an actual perpendicularity, the spiritual forces pulling in a space of their own, more or less like our known space? In the latter case, are the two spaces coincident [1] ; or does the spiritual include the other as that includes a given plane or line; or is every line and every plane of one space perpendicular to every line and plane of the other? The third alternative seems untenable; for, admitting it, how could a spiritual force produce even a deflective effect in physical space? ”

“ Very likely it is as true in our problem as in that of Achilles, that one may rightly either introduce the infinite series or not: i.e. we may say "Everything is caused," and so bring in the infinite series, or say "Volition is its own cause" and stop there, replacing the series of steps by its resultant or quasi-sum.
(3) Statistics do indeed show that, of a given people under given circumstances, one in so many misdirects a letter, or commits a murder, or can read three languages ; and that the ratios remain very nearly constant from decade to decade unless the environment changes. ”

“ As the current of suggestions, whether determined mechanically or otherwise, passes before the ego, the ego puts forth a free selective power whose result is physically directive. Here Stewart's account of attention may or may not come in: either the ego may merely arrest the current long enough for the mechanism to do the rest, like the "type-wheel" in the telegraph, which prints whenever it stops, or else, possibly, the ego may deflect the current without arresting it. ”

“ Thus motives and volitions would belong to a system of what we may call "spiritual forces," because like physical forces they may oppose one another, conspire and perhaps combine into intermediately directed resultants; but these spiritual forces cannot so conspire with or oppose the actual physical changes or motions of the moment as to "do work," but can only produce deflection or transference of an energy to whose potential they do not contribute. ”

“ It would seem then that the analogies of physical and mathematical science are not unfriendly to that old faith in freedom to which the conscience and common sense of the race have substantially held; and if we cannot now hold to it in the old simple way, this is mainly because the world as known to us is so much larger and more complex than as known to our fathers. ”

“ Now, however it be to the philosopher, Past and Future are not alike to the scientist. Even if physical causation be considered as reversible, many of the cycles of actual change are not. These cycles move in fixed directions, and not backward, even when they bring events and successive individuals or systems around to nearly the old conditions. ”

“ To examine the facts of consciousness belongs more to the philosopher than to the mathematician. My own consciousness, however, appears on the whole to testify neither to complete determinism nor to complete freedom ”

“ We do somehow receive impressions from the outer material world, and do, whether freely or as mere automata or channels of influence, produce impressions upon it; while, on the other hand, we are aware of phenomena in ourselves, like intelligence, joy, gratitude, obligation, remorse, which seem to us essentially independent of space and matter, though they often have reference to the external world. ”

“ Moreover, the effect upon the inner character may be more rapid than upon the apparent character and the environment: for if there be a certain element of earnestness, making the inner results fairly constant as to direction, these results should tend to accumulate proportionally to the number of occasions, while the effects of environment upon the inner character would be more conflicting and so would follow more nearly the law of the square root. ”

“ And again, it is natural to assume a symmetry and reversibleness of relation between Past and Future which does not really exist, and thence to conclude that if one be fixed, the other must be so too. ”